Worried about people not liking the controversial side to my novels

ok. there are 2 sides to my books. the controversial side, and the fantasy side.
there are two villans.
1) the DDR: a powerful government sort of group that believe that white people are supreme and plan to enslave or kill other races
2) a demon that has escaped into our world through a magical barrier and is slowly becoming more powerful so that it can destroy the barrier and unleash an army of demons.

in book 1, the fantasy and controversial stuff seems very separate at first, but as the books go along they both intertwine.

also, the story starts in 2030, where world population has grown almost to a tipping point, and religion has been banned (e.g. a policeman demands a young girl hands over her cross necklace in chapter 1)

when the country's government has failed and riots start breaking out etc the DDR steps up and tells people of a world of equality etc and people decide to follow them because they are scared.

lots of people (friends and non-friends) like my ideas, but what do you guys think?

I wouldn't worry about controversy much. So long as you're not celebrating white supremacy, people will probably go along with your story.

I don't think it's realistic, though (if it matters at all in a fantasy), to expect religion to be banned only seventeen years from now. Far too many devoutly religious people would object VERY strongly, and given that many people are willing to die and even kill for their religions, their opposition to such a policy would make it impossible to implement. Revolutions and civil wars have been fought over less.

I think, if you want a world with no religion, you'd have to set it at least several generations in the future.

I would expect a good reason why religion would be banned, I'd care much more about that than the actual fact itself to be honest. So long as you can back up what you are trying to do with sound reasoning anything can work, really.

I don't think it's realistic, though (if it matters at all in a fantasy), to expect religion to be banned only seventeen years from now. Far too many devoutly religious people would object VERY strongly, and given that many people are willing to die and even kill for their religions, their opposition to such a policy would make it impossible to implement. Revolutions and civil wars have been fought over less.

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I think you'd be surprised. In every communist country religion was banned practically overnight, and in some countries such as Russia, even some churches were destroyed, monks banned for a few decades etc. But nowhere near the destruction and reckless murder on a huge scale that "pagans" suffered at the hands of the Christians.
For all intents and purposes people in communist countries were ill-advised to go into church, for the fear of being dobbed in and ending up in a gulag or some such for trying to subvert the marxist ideology which proscribed that "religion was the opium of the masses". This inherently connected all religion with the exploitation of the people, especially those in need, and as such was viewed as dangerous and destructive and indeed a policeman or a teacher could demand you remove your cross pendant.

Prior to the communist revolution everyone in future communist societies was deeply religious, as mostly those countries went straight from the feudal system into communism, and again today you go there and you'll find a lot of religious, pious people (especially in rural Russia).

Surprisingly, when it happened, there was a small percentage of people who passionately objected but vast majority didn't. Basically, the trade off was equal rights, decent social policy, education and healthcare were free. People no longer needed religion because they could, effectively, rely on the state for real help. Even during times of famine there was no "religious revolution" although after a couple of decades of this, monasteries and churches got re-established but with a much lower profile, and it was viewed more as a historical inheritance than relevant force in the society.
What that demonstrated to me is that once you remove extreme inequality and practical slavery from the society's dynamic, religion is surprisingly easy to "give up" and it can indeed happen overnight or close to it.

However, in this situation, you had people struggle very deeply with new "rules". My grandma said how she was angry and scared, after the war (her whole family died in concentration camp). She couldn't get her head around that there "is no god" and she replaced her faith with a faith in communist doctrine, that all people were created equal and deserve equal treatment by the society. If you think about it, both Christianity and communism profess an utopia, perfect society which, probably, can never exist. So when the communism fell, a lot of people such as my grandmother were sarcastically saying :" So what, there is god again?" Some people turned to religion, some remained atheists, inequality reared its ugly head again, but the idea of equality can easily replace religion, it seems.

It referred to the physiological effects of the mass, which has since been shown to induce endorphin-based euphoria through a trance-like state. But lots of things cause same effect - movies, music, intense physical exercise etc. It was about targeting the message church chose to communicate during mass, such as nationalism, hatred of other religions, the basic war-mongering.

It referred to the physiological effects of the mass, which has since been shown to induce endorphin-based euphoria through a trance-like state. But lots of things cause same effect - movies, music, intense physical exercise etc.

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Yeah, it's from his 'Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right', where he says that religion is the flowers around a chain, and what people need to do is break the chains, and kill the flowers with criticism, and then try to live with what's left. I tend to think of Marx as not a political philosopher, but a philosopher who wrote about politics and economics, and just happened to advocate revolution - hence my two quotations of him in my signature. The 'Opium of the masses' comes, I've always thought, slightly too early in his philosophical career to be properly lumped together with his later objections to capitalism. I mean, he published it months before he met Engels. I always took it he was against blindly following organized religion, not faith itself.

Anyway. I do know that Albania was the worlds first, officially atheist country and things did not really go very well. Religion is just very hard to get rid of, and for really not much gain.

Yes, exactly! As for Albania, they have a very specific culture, but that's a long story. I agree with you in everything, I am always for freedom of expression, as long as it doesn't trample on someone's right to exist

I'd be more put off by the fantasy side of the story. The "controversial" side could be interesting depending on how it's handled. The two together in one story sounds a little odd to me without any further information.

there's nothing in what you intend to write that hasn't been written about successfully before... many times... so i don't see why you're worried about it...

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Here comes the demotivator...

Seriously though, although your concept is not unique it is still interesting just from the outline you gave us so i would urge you to go ahead with it. And as many have said already, it is not really controversial.

Seriously though, although your concept is not unique it is still interesting just from the outline you gave us so i would urge you to go ahead with it. And as many have said already, it is not really controversial.

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But let's suppose it was controversial. Let's suppose the OP posted it and drew flames by the dozen. I find this possible scenario troubling on several fronts.

First, I am adamantly against any rule, procedure or societal pressure that chills debate. I don't care if the odds were 100:1, I'm finding in our modern world of the "the new normal" that when people feel the pendulum swing of dissatifaction, they soften their stance. So what if some folks blow a gasket? All they have to do is type, "OP, I disagree," and then craft a rebuttal.

Throwing a hissy fit simply shows me that maturity is absent.

Second, what about the quality of our stories? If the writer must first pass his prose through some political correctness filter, then chances are the plot is going to be limp. Somewhere out there in supposedly free America, the thought-police want to change a line in Huckleberry Finn to read, "Hark and forsooth, fellow traveler and disenfranchised African American, I fear our raft doesn't meet proper OSHA standards for safe transport..."

Last is the entire idea of flaming a writer. It takes guts to pour your soul out in verse and prose. The work might be dismal and full of errors, but it might speak to others who feel the same way. I sincerely believe that the reason we have trouble with creativity is that some themes are "safe" and many fear rocking the boat.

Did you know that I am exchanging friendly PMs with a member here that I critqued the harshest? He gets it. And my guess is that he'll be tackling some pretty challenging topics in the future. I'll be quite interested in reading some stuff that is sure to be bold.

If It's in the future, unless you come up with a valid explanation, whites would not be in the majority any longer.

So, it would most likely be a small, over shadowed community spreading white supremacy. I couldn't see how a government preaching that way ending up in power (at least in the US) without a far fetched reason. In this age, people just wouldn't allow that to happen.

However, if the government was anti-white, I could see that happening. It's a numbers game.

Not so far fetched for a country to become really totalitarian. Hitler stirred up all sorts of trouble within the space of about two and a half decades. Who is to say something bad like that wouldn't happen again. We can hardly know, can we? When Hitler was born no one knew about what he would do later in life.
Also, we should try to suspend our disbelief a bit here, as we do for most stories out there. I'm sure this idea is reasonable to some that are out there.

We should try to suspend our disbelief, but, if the story is set in our time or a future time, we have to consider modern communications technology. The internet is incredibly powerful. It links people from all over the world closely and cheaply. It's hard to imagine one nation, even the United States, becoming totalitarian when the public has access to the internet. It's a leveler; it's a system of checks and balances all by itself. And once people have it, they do NOT want to lose it, so it's unlikely a free nation would tolerate a government shutting off access to it.

This is a different world from the one Hitler came to power in. In some respects - very important respects - technology has made it immensely more difficult for a new Hitler to gain power. We simply aren't as isolated as we once were. Hitlers get smacked down before they get started.

We should try to suspend our disbelief, but, if the story is set in our time or a future time, we have to consider modern communications technology. The internet is incredibly powerful. It links people from all over the world closely and cheaply. It's hard to imagine one nation, even the United States, becoming totalitarian when the public has access to the internet. It's a leveler; it's a system of checks and balances all by itself. And once people have it, they do NOT want to lose it, so it's unlikely a free nation would tolerate a government shutting off access to it.

This is a different world from the one Hitler came to power in. In some respects - very important respects - technology has made it immensely more difficult for a new Hitler to gain power. We simply aren't as isolated as we once were. Hitlers get smacked down before they get started.

I know I'm an optimist, but the world has definitely changed.

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I agree with this. One of Hitler's most strongest power was propoganda, and that's hard to do these days where people pick and choose where they get their information from. You'd have to somehow restrict or destroy modern communication networks. Like with government censored internet and whatnot...

I'm not so sure. Look, most of our media, almost all of Hollywood and the majority of our colleges will believe anything our current government tells them.

My SIL is so distrustful of this information cabal that she only listens to the BBC to find opposing viewpoints.

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Hmm. There was a time, and not so long ago, when the BBC was the only electronic media source in the UK, and it was state-controlled. It was the mouthpiece of the British government. There are many nations in the world now in which the broadcast media are state-controlled. Hollywood isn't much compared to a state-controlled media.

The internet short-circuits all that. That's why totalitarian governments hate it so much, and try to restrict their public's access to it.

I'm not saying the internet makes everything perfect. It doesn't. But I do believe, as I said, that it makes it immensely more difficult for a dictator to take power, at least in a nation that was previously free. The internet is a powerful force against tyranny. Modern communications technology is a powerful force against tyranny. It's easy to say that political and social movements run in cycles, but technology does not. Technology only advances, and it has a greater and greater effect on society.

You can reasonably say a lot of bad things about technology, because a lot of it gets misused. But I think the net effect of it is positive - it's liberating, because it promotes free exchange of ideas. Tyrants can only fight a losing battle against it.

Don't worry about being controversial! Some of the most powerful, shocking and interesting novels are controversial. For example I used to be a member of a very controversial forum that specialized in all writting and artistic aspects of the infamous 'Lolicon'.

The word 'Lolicon' is actually based on a novel by Vladamir Nabocov (or something like that, he's Russian) called 'Lolita' and it was a very controversial book at the time it was written and even today it remains. It even had a film made for it and has many, many fans. If a book about a man falling in love with a 12 year old became that successful then why shouldn't your controversial works also?